By Jorge Mariscal
The impact of the economic crisis on the University of California has been in the headlines over the last two weeks.
Last Saturday’s Union Tribune article on the UC budget meltdown drew heavily on a letter that was signed by 23 department chairmen at UC San Diego. Unfortunately, this has been the only public proposal from UCSD faculty and so all of us who teach there have been tainted with its self-serving recommendations.
Although the tone of sociology professor Andy Scull’s original letter gave the impression that he was contesting the current UC regime, in many ways the logic of what he proposed coincided perfectly with where the UC was heading long before the economic crisis.
Professor Scull and the other department chairs who signed his letter urged UC President Yudof and the regents to consider “closing campuses and enrolling more out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition, to minimize long-term damage to the UC’s more accomplished campuses.”
As the privatization of the UC continues (UCSD, for example, is a public university in name only with only 6% of its budget coming from the state), more out-of-state and international students will be admitted. This has been a shift desired by some for several years now. The mission of the UC that says we should be serving the people of California is sacrificed on the altar of revenue flow.
UCSD then becomes a finishing school for out-of-state students from rich families and affluent foreigners. The University of Michigan, now almost fully privatized and being talked about as a model for the new UC, currently enrolls more international students than Mexican American students.
Once the three “elite” UC campuses make the transition to being in essence private schools, working class and minority students will slowly disappear from their classrooms. Again, this is already happening due to increased tuition (which Scull supports) and enrollment caps. But if UC were to adopt Scull’s plan and wipe out the campuses with the most underrepresented students—Riverside and Merced—you accelerate the process.
Of course, this has already happened at the professional schools where Blacks and Chicanos can be counted on one hand. In Scull’s scenario, by 2040 when Latinos make up a majority of the state not just the professional schools but the entire UC will be closed to all but a handful of them (although large numbers of them will be academically qualified). Talented 2%, anyone?
It will be argued that wealthy out-of-state and foreign students paying higher fees will subsidize financial aid for less affluent students. But this positive scenario depends on the kind of successful outreach to working families that has never been the norm at UCSD.
The one area where UCSD has made progress in terms of enrolling more Chicano and Black students has been community college transfers. A likely outcome of the crisis is that foreign transfers begin to displace local transfers. The percentage of foreign students among transfers is already higher than it is among new freshmen.
The twin elephants in the budget crisis room that UC administrators and faculty have chosen to ignore are class and race privilege. In the case of UC San Diego, it’s in the institutional DNA. When campus founder Roger Revelle first imagined a La Jolla campus in the late 1950s, he saw it as an exclusive “seedbed for future leaders.” The unwashed masses, he implied, could attend San Diego State.
The reaction in the central valley to the now infamous letter from the UCSD 23 was rightfully angry and to the point. The Fresno Bee’s Bill McEwen put forth one of the better analyses: “So, faced with the challenge of making do with less — as millions of Californians are doing — what did some of the purportedly best and brightest at UC San Diego come up with? Close down the newest UC serving some of the poorest towns in America, a region where thousands of bright, industrious youngsters are working to someday become the first college graduates in their families. I’ve got a better idea. That campus they’ve got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos — I kid you not — list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley.” Or maybe Chula Vista.
Although late last week UC President Yudof rejected the idea of closing campuses, it is important to understand the logic behind what the UCSD 23 suggested—a “disaster capitalism” solution in which the crisis allows those at the top to maintain their privilege, facilitates privatization, and further fetishizes the notion of “excellence.” Elite sectors of each campus will become more exclusive as rich, i.e., externally funded, departments turn into gated communities surrounded by the mini-ghettos of under funded programs that are unable to generate their own revenue.
It’s curious to see that so many department chairs at UCSD whose own programs could be negatively affected signed on to the letter, e.g. History, Communication. If the crisis continues for two or three more years, as some predict, smaller programs like African American and Chicano/Latino studies will no doubt shrink and may eventually disappear. Big-time donors willing to drop a million dollars on academic programs designed to question economic and cultural injustice simply don’t exist.
Is there a way out of the crisis for the UC? President Yudof’s contention that if the university could only explain to the people of California how much the UC does for them they would rally to its defense founders on the shoals of powerful stereotypes about “lazy ‘radical’ professors.” If this crisis does nothing else, it hopefully will destroy once and for all the fantasy that “Marxist professors” are running the University of California.
The UC is a giant corporation replete with over-paid executives, a cadre of increasingly entrepreneurial and hyper-professionalized faculty, and an army of over-worked staff and instructors. Milton Friedman would approve; Marx most certainly would not.
On Wednesday, the UC Regents rubber stamped a furlough/pay cut for faculty and staff. Only Lt. Gov. John Garamendi voted against it. Unless the Regents and elected officials come up with new ways for the state to support higher education, the UC system will continue its decline. The Cal State campuses will follow close behind. Who will be the real losers in all of this?—the hopes and dreams of generations of future working and middle class California students.
Jorge Mariscal is director of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.
20. July 2009 at 6:56 pm
Thank you Prof. Mariscal for outlining the underlying elitism in the letter and for showing how our educational institutions are shutting their doors to those seeking the American dream through educational mobility. I never thought I’d see this day…
20. July 2009 at 8:28 pm
The post states, “at the professional schools [...] Blacks and Chicanos can be counted on one hand.” Am I wrong in having the impression this is not true at least of the UCSD Medical School? Medical students seem to be quite a diverse group.
20. July 2009 at 10:36 pm
I share many of the author’s views, but it might appear hypocritical to accuse the letter in question of being “self-serving” while at the same time the author, director of a Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program, puts forth arguments in support of humanities and Chicano/Latino studies.
Is there a fine line between advocating one’s interests and being self-serving? Perspectives will differ, and we can hardly expect many people to argue against their own interests. I believe everyone involved deserves the presumption their position and arguments are earnest and forthright.
Such quibbles notwithstanding, the piece does interrogate elitism vs. egalitarianism at U.C., an important issue that appears totally neglected by University officials in favor of platitudinous, euphemistic-sounding talk about “excellence.”
Who can argue with excellence? By couching the discussion in these terms, they dodge deeper questions underlying the debate, such as what exactly constitutes an “excellent” public university in the first place.
20. July 2009 at 10:50 pm
o.k., not one hand but maybe two and a half: “Of the 122 students admitted [to the UCSD School of Medicine] in Fall 2004, 7 were Hispanic/Latino; 4 were African American; 4 were multi-racial; and 1 was American Indian.”
20. July 2009 at 11:36 pm
Xicano, interesting figures from 2004. The piece emphasizes that it’s a trend (“working class and minority students will slowly disappear [...] this has already happened at the professional schools”). I wonder if we can find more recent figures and see what kind of change there’s been in the past 5 years. (I did a little searching but haven’t found anything so far.)
21. July 2009 at 3:49 am
P.S. I’m trying not to picture two and a half hands… :O
21. July 2009 at 5:38 am
Typical of what you would expect from a professor in a “Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program”
This field is nonsense.
We need to get Mexican Americans into Engineering, Biology, Mathematics.
The best thing we could do for minorities is to shut down the “studies” departments. These are filled with academic parasites who divert bright young men and women into nonsensical fields where they spend their time whining instead of contributing.
Don’t let a good crisis go to waste. Shut them down. It would save a lot of money too.
21. July 2009 at 8:07 pm
Ms. Janet Spear,
I applaud your use of the term “typical” to describe Dr. Mariscal response to the injustices that are being played out in California’s higher education system. It is “typical” for people of color to speak out and voice criticism to the unfair and often times bigoted practices of government and groups in power. So, yes, minorities and all others who are experiencing the “dark side” of California’s mismanagement should “typically” speak out as Dr. Mariscal has so eloquently done.
Second, your statement that ethnic studies is “nonsense” is completely unfounded. Why stop there? Why don’t we reevaluate the “value” of British literature, American studies, the entire English department. Don’t they promote and educate a form of “ethnic studies?” Your narrow and dare I say bigoted criticism of ethnic studies is short sighted and ill advised.
Thirdly, most of these “ethnic studies” departments already function with a limited budget and often list professors as “associates.” In other words, the elimination of these departments would not only reduce the quality of education at universities but would do little in reducing spending (perhaps a university should reevalute the cost of athletic departments as an alternative).
Ms. Spear to reduce the quality work and knowledge produced by professors in the humanities as “nonsensical” would negate the value of education and a democracy’s responsibility to provide a quality service to all of its citizens and residents. It isn’t just engineers and mathmaticians that make the world go round. Last I checked it wasn’t an engineer or biologist who was elected to the American presidency. In fact, we haven’t had an engineer or the like in 80 years (Herbert Hoover–Great Depression? Wait, you would need history to know that and of course you find that field to be “nonsense.”)
21. July 2009 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for your support of the arts, history, and philosophy, Janet. Without these areas of study, your engineers, biologists, and mathematicians will be pencil necked nerds without a shred of knowledge about the past, ethics, culture, and justice. And if you think shutting down Chicano programs at the UC will save a lot of money, you’re hallucinating. Whatever they get is chump change. Oh, and by the way, Chicanos are the Mexican Americans who don’t whine. When you tell them the study of their history and culture is nonsense, they get right up in your grill.
21. July 2009 at 10:32 pm
Dana: According to http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/gradschlraceeth08.htm
Out of a total of 126 graduates, UCSD Med School in 2008 graduated 1 African American, 1 Native American, and 7 Mexican Americans.
Sorry about the two and half hands image.
22. July 2009 at 3:53 am
” Why don’t we reevaluate the “value” of British literature, American studies, the entire English department. Don’t they promote and educate a form of “ethnic studies?”
You are starting to catch on. These departments, today, teach the same level of rubbish as the other “studies” departments.
I don’t mind if people want to waste their time on this nonsense on their own dime. I just don’t want to subsidize it with my tax dollars.
Also, I would appreciate if the patronizing sexist attitude was removed from the comments addressed to me.
22. July 2009 at 4:18 pm
Xicano, good digging! So the total underrepresented UCSD Med School graduates can be counted on 2 hands after all, unfortunately. It’s interesting the numbers are almost the same as 2004 except 3 fewer African Americans. On the other (half?) hand these numbers are so small it’s hard to tell the difference between a significant change and normal fluctuation.
Comparing to the breakdown of UCSD undergrads by ethnicity in http://studentresearch.ucsd.edu/sriweb/Profile2008.pdf it looks like underrepresented minorities are in fact a little more underrepresented in the med school than among undergraduates, which would I guess be the ordinarily depressing expectation. Thanks for disabusing me.
23. July 2009 at 6:10 pm
This is an excellent piece, of course. PLEASE — SOMEONE — CONTACT JORGE MARISCAL ON MY BEHALF and ask him to contact me at either headburg@yahoo.com, tosca.2010@yahoo.com or 831-688-8038 immediately. I have a plan designed to “secure the UC” as per our mutual interests, giving priority to Prof. Mariscal’s agenda. Blessings in solidarity, Richard Oxman http://oxtogrind.org/archive/350
25. July 2009 at 10:15 pm
Professor — wasn’t Jimmy Carter trained as an engineer? And Obama and Clinton are lawyers. I respect your position — even if I don’t agree with it all — but you sort of cherry picked in your critique.
10. August 2009 at 8:44 am
You say lower and middles class families will be the losers, but that’s an optimistic and even elitist view as well. Increase that assessment to anyone making under $200,000 per year. Those making between 80k and 200k can’t get aid because UCs do not award merit based aid without economic need. Paying for college will take half of what we have saved over 15 years and we have another child. My parents are older and have already had 2 medical crises’ that took everything they had. We will be supporting them soon. In the end we will sell our home to support our kid’s college and our parents. Who is rich? How can California be strong if it neither educates it’s future, nor supplements students able to prove they are college ready? This is like a farmer who grows crops for a living. She plants this seed, watches it grow, sees she has a lot of great product ready to be harvested, but because she chose not to buy a harvester, she just waits for the wind to blow product into her barn from her neighbor’s field. Who in their right mind would do that?